All Your Pretty Dreams (13 page)

He smiled up at the sky
full of stars. He didn’t care what Red Vine thought of him, or
Minneapolis. He would try very hard not to get anxious about what
the Big Scary Future held. He would handle it. He wouldn’t make a
mess of his life like his parents— he would be smart, he would look
ahead. He would work and plan— and make it happen.

Whatever the hell
it
was.

Chapter 10

Three days after the
occupants of the house on Birch Street saw the backside of Ozzie
Knobel he returned to the Rainy Days Motor Inn. Jonny stood at the
parlor window with his mother and Father Teddy, watching Ozzie on
the roof, stripping shingles. The sun was out, waves of heat in the
air. He wielded the big hook frantically, as if he’d just realized
that the roof was a mess, even though it leaked every spring for
the last twenty.

Margaret stared over the
rose bushes, eyes like slits. She had recovered her sanity, even
braved the gossips at Eva’s Beauty Barn to get her hair done. She
made a noise like a raspberry. “She wants him to sell,” she
grumbled. “And leave town.”

“
Now, Margaret,” the
priest said, touching her arm. “Maybe he just wants to prove his
worthiness— to you and the family.”

“
After 35
years?”

Jonny watched his father
dig away at the old shingles, sending rotting layers flying. Jagged
pieces of asphalt shingle and tarpaper landed on the students’
cars. Others fell on rose bushes and the picket fence. Jonny felt
the pressure to help, to at least clean up. His father was acting
like a crazy person. Ozzie would be at it for awhile, maybe days.
Maybe get Jonny involved, make him take sides.

The priest said, “People
change, Margaret.”

She snorted.
“Germans?”

Ozzie crawled over to the
other side of the roof, bent to his task. They shouldn’t watch.
Jonny asked Father Teddy if he’d like more coffee. Before he could
answer, a knock on the door was followed by a
yoo-hoo
. Carol floated in on a cloud
of gardenia.

“
Look who I’ve
brought!”

Carol wore her yellow pedal
pushers with a Hawaiian shirt featuring hula girls. She stepped
aside to let two young women pass. The first Jonny recognized as
Carol’s daughter, last seen at a Christmas gathering. She was bony
everywhere Carol was ample, her mother’s exact opposite, right down
to soul-killing shyness.

Margaret clapped her hands
in a rehearsed manner, her strange, estranged husband forgotten.
“Darling Frances! Just look at you. You’re a sight for sore
eyes.”

The exchange between the
old friends told the story: Margaret and Carol had concocted a plot
to boost Frances’s self-esteem. There was no other explanation for
their enthusiastic comments about her haircut, her complexion, her
shoes, her height. Jonny felt a pang of sympathy. The girl hung her
head, mud-colored eyes darting up unwillingly from under hair the
color of soggy toast. The other girl smiled at everyone as the
mothers ignored her. She radiated good feeling, with blue eyes and
long brown hair that was sleek and wavy.

The Frances Boosters
returned to earth. Carol’s voice resumed its normal pitch and she
introduced the dark-haired woman as Kiki Calhoun. Kiki worked the
room, shaking everyone’s hand. When she got to Jonny her hand was
warm. “Great meeting you, Jon,” she said, startling him with her
sunny smile.

Coffee was ordered up, and
cheese with crackers since baking hadn’t been on the schedule for
some time. Father Teddy took up a post next to shrinking Frances
and tried to get her to talk. No such methods were required for
Kiki Calhoun. She asked Jonny about Red Vine, and soon was talking
about herself. She went to college with Frances at a small college
in Ohio and was visiting campuses with her, looking at graduate
programs. They had already toured Minnesota, Iowa State, Chicago,
and Missouri.

“
And are you finding good
programs?” he asked. “I’m sorry, what did you say you’re
studying?”

“
Physics. I mean, for
Frances,” Kiki said, throwing back her head as she laughed. “Don’t
ask me about it! It’s over my head. I mean, I thought
I
was smart.”

He smiled, glad the pretty
one wasn’t studying physics. That would have been the end of that.
The visit ended soon— although none too soon for Frances— and they
were invited to dinner that night. No mention was made of the
absent father or roofing. They had stuck with light subjects,
summer weather, college life, baseball. He hadn’t consciously
avoided the topic of his musical instrument, or the reason for his
extended visit. He wondered if Kiki despised accordions like other
college girls he could mention.

He found out minutes after
they arrived at the Chichester’s that evening. His grandmother
Nora, an old friend of Carol’s now-deceased mother, had also been
invited, along with Father Teddy. Nora held Margaret’s hands and
whispered solemnly, presumably about her crazy son. Margaret nodded
like a metronome run amok. Frances wore the same gray jeans and
blue shirt— both too short in the cuffs. Kiki had changed into a
yellow top and white slacks that set off her tan.

“
You didn’t tell me you
played the accordion, that you’re in a band,” she said, giving
Jonny a playful smack on the shoulder that made a hot run down his
spine. “You Minnesotans are so modest. Where I come from if you
have a talent everyone knows about it before you can
spit.”

She was from suburban
Chicago. She’d heard plenty of polka bands in her youth and was not
adverse to a swing around the floor now and then. He told her about
Lenny’s party and she was sorry to have missed it.

“
You’ll play again, right?
The band, I mean.”

Jonny glanced at his
mother. Was the Rose Rave still on? Margaret was helping set the
table, setting out bowls of olives. She looked composed, normal, as
if her husband wasn’t the town laughingstock, sowing his
late-middle-aged oats. “We might be doing a gig next Saturday. If
you’re still around.”

“
Fantastic! It’s been ages
since I saw someone under the age of sixty— and frankly, worth
looking at twice— play a polka. I’ll see if we can
stay.”

She bumped his elbow
conspiratorially. This was flirting. Jonny remembered it slightly.
He gave her an appreciative look as her glance fell to his left
hand. “Now what’s this I hear about you being married? That better
not be true.”

“
Separated.”

“
You look sad,” Kiki said,
peering up into his downcast eyes, a pout on her bow-shaped mouth.
“You miss her.”

“
I’m working to make it
final.” Easy how the exaggerations flow: he hadn’t done one thing
to make the divorce a reality. And here he was meeting attractive
women. What was he waiting for?

At dinner he had Kiki on
one side and his grandmother on the other. Nora chewed roast beef
slowly, making little conversation. Carol tried to draw her out,
asking if this year’s blueberry crop was a good one and whether
she’d had any of the college students out in her field.

“
They spent two days in
the back acreage,” Nora said. “Counting the bees.” Kiki stifled a
giggle. Nora gave her a sharp look. “It’s a scientific study. The
more bees, the more berries. I’m curious to find out what sort of
bees I have. I’d love to have more.”

“
I’m allergic to bee
stings,” Frances complained. “Bees attack me. I blow up like a
balloon.”

“
Bees don’t attack,
Frances dear,” Nora said, setting down her fork. “They are
interested in nectar. And if they’re honeybees, making honey. They
are very interesting creatures. That girl— what’s her name?” Jonny
told her. “Isabel is a clever girl, so smart. I enjoyed her. She
hopes to make a career in science. We need committed people in
science, especially women. They understand the big picture so much
better than men do. How all the earth is connected. Bees are a
vital link in the food chain.”

The others chewed silently
at this speech, looking at Nora as if they didn’t know her. Or
didn’t know she had opinions on such topics. Jonny knew but hadn’t
heard Nora expound so much in ages. Kiki raised her eyebrows and
smiled.

“
She does wear odd
costumes,” Carol said.

Nora harrumphed. “We need
more women in science. It’s not a fashion show.”

An awkward pause, then
thankfully Kiki changed the subject, talking about college campuses
(
los campi
, she
called them charmingly) and their travels around the Midwest in an
ancient Cadillac that belonged to her mother. Ten miles to the
gallon, she said, rolling her eyes.

“
Her father was an
astronaut,” Frances said suddenly, motioning to Kiki with a toss of
her hair. Had there been one more moon mission, he would have
walked on the lunar surface. “And made history,” she
added.

“
Oh. Bad luck,” Margaret
said. “Still, an astronaut. How exciting.”

“
Did you live in Florida?”
Father Teddy asked.

“
Summers, when it was
beastly hot,” Kiki said. “My parents divorced when I was five so
after that I only spent summers with him.”

All sorts of questions
came up then, about space travel, weightlessness, moon rocks, the
military. Kiki’s father had almost gone up in a space shuttle too,
but he had gotten too old to be a pilot. More bad luck. Everyone
commiserated, jangled a bit with their pretty young visitor and her
exotic connections to a world they never imagined would touch them
so closely. Just
think
, if he really
had
walked on the moon. That was thrilling. Or would
have been.
Almost
thrilling was pretty good for Red Vine.

“
When he retired from
NASA, he became a commercial pilot. Not too old for that.” She
smiled, then looked at her plate, sadness transforming her bright
expression. “For awhile.”

No one wanted to ask what
that meant. Clink of silver, gulps of water, potatoes passed around
for seconds: all transpired before Frances finally pushed back her
hair and explained. “He died in a plane crash. It wasn’t his
fault.”

“
Lightning,” Kiki sighed.
“He was teaching pilots for the airline.”

“
Oh, dear,” Margaret
said.

“
Dreadful,” Carol
seconded. They all looked at Kiki sympathetically, nearly an
orphan.

“
Poor Daddy,” Kiki said.
“Oh, dear, I’ve made everyone gloomy. Please, someone tell a joke
or something.” She smiled. “Father Teddy? No? Mr.
Chichester?”

In the spotlight again
after his carving demonstration earlier, Dennis Chichester burped
into his napkin and proceeded to tell an off-color joke about a
nun, a priest, and a piano stool. Father Teddy blushed. When Kiki
jumped up to help Frances clear, Jonny joined them in the kitchen.
A white layer cake, decorated with fresh blueberries and tall as a
top hat, sat on a platter, ready for action. He looked at it and
sighed.

“
I’m going to skip
dessert. Your mother won’t mind, will she?” he asked
Frances.

“
Who cares?”

Kiki frowned at her. “You
want to go on a walk or something, Fanny?”

Frances had a nickname? He
waited for her to correct Kiki, or get mad. She seemed to go off at
the slightest provocation. Instead she calmly scraped a plate and
said, “You go ahead. I should stay here. Carol and Dennis need me,
or so they think.”

“
What about you,
John-boy?” Kiki asked, making him wince. He hated that
name.

“
His name is Jonathan,”
Frances said, staring at him then glaring at Kiki.

“
Ah, yeah.” Jonny looked
at Kiki. “You want to get a drink?”

They made quick goodbyes,
slipping out the kitchen door into the night. They walked silently
past moonlit hydrangea bushes, sprinklers tick-ticking across
lawns, fireflies emerging from the woods. Jonny asked, “What’s with
Frances? She seems a little, um, anxious.”

“
She gets down. Worried
about her grades. And she has anger issues, to tell the truth. Her
therapist was the one who suggested she come home and work out
things with her parents.” She raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure
where she’s going with that.”